The Public Defender studies the case of Mamuka Khazaradze and Badri Japaridze. According to Nino Lomjaria, “the case materials do not contain the elements necessary for assessing an action as a crime of money laundering”.
The document of the Ombudsman’s Office gives legal explanation of money-laundering as a crime, its specific prerequisites, scheme and purpose. Noting that “prior to the process of legalization of the illegal income, it is necessary that there be illegally obtained “black money” and an attempt of the offender to integrate that money into the monetary-credit system,” adding that “a predicate offence usually implies a systematic, repeat offence”.
Lomjaria highlighted, in Khazaradze - Japaridze case there is not “even a one-off preliminary, predicate offence, not to mention a repeat predicate offence.”
According to the document, the defendants did not follow the general money-laundering scheme, and “did not deposit the disputable money in different accounts, did not divide it into smaller amounts for the purpose of avoiding control, did not make small transactions and did not get the money back to their account, which should have been the main purpose of the crime”.